Clinical Utility of Droplet Digital PCR for Human Cytomegalovirus
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) has historically been the major infectious cause of morbidity and mortality among patients receiving hematopoietic cell or organ transplant. Standard care in a transplant setting involves frequent monitoring of CMV viral load over weeks to months to determine when antiviral treatment may be required. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is the standard molecular diagnostic method for monitoring. Recently, digital PCR (dPCR) has shown promise in viral diagnostics, although current dPCR systems have lower throughput than qPCR systems. Here, we compare qPCR and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) for CMV detection in patient plasma samples. Droplet digital PCR exhibits increased precision over qPCR at viral loads of ≥4 log10 with equivalent sensitivity. However, retrospective analysis of longitudinal samples from transplant patients with CMV viral loads near therapeutic thresholds did not provide evidence that the improved precision of ddPCR would be of clinical benefit. Given the throughput advantages of current qPCR systems, a widespread switch to dPCR for CMV monitoring would appear premature.
Source: Journal of Clinical Microbiology
DOI: 10.1128/jcm.00803-14
Institutions: University of Washington, Fred Hutch Cancer Center
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2146081985